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Virtue signaling. Lighting up monuments is the way progressives like to show how ‘woke’ they are. Usually towers and buildings have light thrown upon them after terrorists murder innocent civilians. It is the perfect way to show future terrorists that the West will continue to remain impotent.

Of course love trumps hate is a strategy for liberals. Would be terrorists undoubtedly have pangs of guilt when seeing a building lit up. Deep in their hearts, the defining factor in choosing not to eviscerate concert goers, spray AK-47 fire at cartoonists or run people down in trucks comes from seeing the masses splash French flags over social media avatars.

Still, how crass can NYC be to bathe skyscraper towers to celebrate abortion? Surprised they didn’t invite Michelle Wolf to do her abortion sketch on taxpayer dime in Central Park! What better display of a government acting in the interests of only some of its constituents.

By all means CM respects legislation introduced via democratic process. However is it necessary to champion the terminating of fetuses? Why not conduct a fireworks display for added effect? It is hard not to see it as anything other than an overt and deliberate slap in the face of the pro-lifers and the current administration. Just as easy to pass the legislation without flipping the bird.

Let’s look at the stats.

c.700,000 fetuses are terminated in America each year. Down from 1.4 million in 1990. Hardly stats to cheer about. Of course the arguments for a woman’s right to choose will always be thrown at pro-lifers. Yet allowing termination until birth?

Eurostat statistics on abortion reveal that Germany, France, UK, Spain and Italy alone terminate a combined 760,000 fetuses per annum. Across the EU-28 there are 1.25mn terminations. Without getting into a debate on abortion rights, the pure statistical number points to 20.4% of fetuses never make it out of the womb alive.

According to the Guttmacher Institute some 56 million abortions occur annually. Every. Single. Year.Think that WWII saw 50 million deaths in 6 years of conflict with wide spread use of lethal weapons. So abortions kill at a far higher rate than global conflict.

How ironic that a leftist professor at Birmingham City University, Kehinde Andrews, accused WWII RAF pilots of war crimes. On that logic what does that make abortion clinics? Safe houses?

Take a look at the following photos if you’re game and ask yourself whether abortion is something to celebrate? Once again, this piece isn’t a cry to exert control over women’s rights rather question society and its approach to taking more individual responsibility.

Or are we mistaken to think that the real reason NY lit up these monuments was to lament for all of the fetuses with heartbeats that never had a say in the very legislation that killed them the day before delivery?

While the gender neutral PC brigade strives to prevent hurt feelings by way of compelling correct pronoun usage in the military, perhaps they might reflect on how Lt. Norman Martin Peterson was feeling at the time he telegrammed his wife in 1941. Only true veterans can possibly understand how precious life is when living day in and day out under live fire against people sworn to kill them. They never knew when their number might be up. Yet our top brass want to cloak our soldiers in imaginary verbal flak jackets.

75 years ago, this is what Lt Peterson of the 1st Australian Field Ambulance had to say about the people who took for granted the very freedoms he and his mates sacrificed so much to provide. The military is no place for snowflakes.

“Well on reading about some of the women you were telling me about I feel a loathing for such hypocritical parasites. Is this what men are laying down their lives to protect? I sometimes wish that they could see how a bloke looks like when he is unburied for a couple of months, a skeleton with boots and clothes on, eaten by ants. A grinning skull and shirt black and stiff with congealed blood. Or a few Japs scattered around a shell hole with leg bones protruding from their boots…

…I wonder and think that these bones were a few months ago living people, with their loves and hates, wives and mothers, and sweethearts, posted as missing, they are frequently seen in the jungle, unburied until found. Then I think of the mongrels safe in Australia and having a great time the bastards – pardon my eloquence but I really get worked up over the mongrels that are not worth the little finger of the boys on the job defending their pseudo honour and their miserable little lives.”

When a man can see sadness and pity even for his sworn enemy, it makes one reflect on the horrors of war and why we should spend much more time honoring our military’s bravery rather than protect cowardice by hiding behind compelled speech indoctrination.

What sort of defence force can Australia rely on if our military brass blathers on about the importance of “diversity”? The irony is that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) reduced the actual female recruitment target and missed it by an even wider margin. Instead of respecting the pure vocational choices of men and women somehow the military seems to think ever higher levels of discrimination will overcome it. Military morale is not high.

“100 Days of Change, running from July 1-October 8, aims to strengthen the momentum for individuals to improve our operational effectiveness by committing to gender equality and equity at all levels.”

There is only one thing a military needs to do – be capability effective. It should focus on candidates who fit that requirement. Nothing else matters. Yet RADM Mark Hammond said, “We must do this as one Navy, regardless of age, rank, race, religion, sexual orientation, ability or gender,” Indeed he should but such outcomes do not come through blatant discriminatory practices.

Shouldn’t a military focus on capabilities of the individual – whether he/she meets the “same” minimum fitness requirements (women have easier standards to pass), can hit enemy targets or whatever objective is set out. If 100 women are better than 100 men for the specific role then the military should hire 100 women and vice versa. Imagine if 100 men proved to be more capable than 100 women for a particular skill? In order to to hit targets, 25 men would be shunned to make way for inferior skills. If 100 women were better in this hypothetical situation, imagine the outrage if only 25 were selected for the 100 positions to keep the diversity target? It wouldn’t and shouldn’t happen.

Is discrimination, where recruiters face demotion if they don’t hit gender based targets, the way we want to run a military? Let’s take a look.

In the 2015-16 Women in the ADFreport we see the Navy wishes to have 25% women by 2023 it stands at 21.3% today, up from 19% in 2016.

If we were to look at actual vs target, it seems that the path is diverging. Isn’t that indication that women are less interested in the military as a career choice? Yet the Navy is forced to discriminate against males in order to hit targets.

So has the Army it wants 15% by 2023 and is tracking marginally ahead with the ultimate aim of 25%. Could it be that 15% is the “natural” rate of women wanting to join the armed forces?

The Air Force is also aiming for 25% by 2023 but is tracking below target.

We should reflect on a study conducted around the world covering over 100,000 subjects which revealed that the countries with the biggest push/policy provision for equality and diversity cause the opposite to occur when choices are exercised. Scandinavia is the perfect example. Men and women don’t sort themselves into the same categories if we leave them alone to do it of their own accord through policies that tend to maximize equality. In Scandinavia it is 20 to one female nurses to male and approximately the same male engineers to female engineers,

Yet look at the lengths the Royal Australian Air Force goes to in order to hit diversity through blatant discriminatory practices.

“In support of this growth path Air Force has implemented, or is in the process of implementing, a number of recruitment and retention initiatives such as:

release of an Air Force produced recruitment guide, ‘PropElle’, to support female pilot candidates through the recruitment process.

No such programs are available for men.

Despite all these programmes, surely any squadron leader with any common sense wants the most effective fighting force. Once the canopy closes, they depend on each other.

What an insult to women to think they need all these artificial prop ups to get ahead. Every ambitious women CM has ever met has never relied on free kicks but sheer determination, grit and above all ability.

It is clear in the table above that all three military branches missed female recruitment targets in 2015/16. The irony is even after lowering the numerical targets of female hires in each military branch over 2014/15, recruiters missed by an even bigger margin. Evidence that on balance women are less likely to join the military when driven by personal choice!

The ADF paper also notes that women quit at higher rates than men, especially at the trainee stage. Men are also much more likely to remain in the military than women after 18mths of parental or maternity leave.

In terms of gender pay gap there are marginal differences. In the senior ranks – Commodore (Navy), Brigadier (Army) and Air Marshall (Air Force) – women are paid more than men on average. Although the ADF “determines work value and subsequent remuneration proposals based primarily on capability delivery. Where there is a direct or similar civilian (non-military) occupation, market relativities may contribute to remuneration determinations. One example of this is in Defence’s technical trades, where there are measurable market influences and relativity for trades such as vehicle mechanics.”

In terms of effectiveness of these diversity programmes, the data is also telling a little more than half of women think it makes difference. 45% of men also agree. Hardly overwhelming evidence.

When addressing morale, only 40% of men and women feel positive. Confidence in senior leadership was around 63%. Not exactly the figures that make a war fighter. 22% of women are actively planning to leave the military and 25% of men. If the military keeps it up perhaps male resignations will help boost the percentages of female recruits that don’t seem keen to join.

The military is the last place that social experimentation should be conducted. Let’s be clear that China, Australia’s most realistic threat in the Asia-Pacific, doesn’t practice diversity in the PLA. It projects capability.

Should our frigates be sunk, our fighters shot down or our artillery troops shelled to smithereens, at least we can say they didn’t die in vain but won the war of diversity. Await the rainbow camouflage to broaden our “wokeness”

In a world increasingly pushing for safe spaces, trigger warnings and legal remediation for hurt feelings, the ANZAC Memorial at Be’er Sheva makes a mockery of today’s society. Two gentlemen from the First World War make this point clearly. Both lied about their age to defend freedom. They weren’t alone.

The first soldier, H.T. Bell, lied about his age so he could enlist, despite being only 14. He also lied about his name. He died as a light horseman in the Battle of Be’er Sheva where the ANZACs defeated the Turks by charging their cannons and machine guns. The authorities contacted the Wickhams (his alias) to inform their son he died only to discover they didn’t have one. They eventually tracked down the Bells who thought he’d run away to be a jackaroo. He was only 16.

Lt.Col L.C. Maygar VC was 48 at the time of the battle. Having won a Victoria Cross, the Empire’s highest order of valor, during the Boer War he was too old to serve in WW1. So he chopped his age by 6 years to make the cut. Sadly he died in battle but willingly volunteered to be put in harms way.

The actions of a youth and someone old enough to be his father fought for what they believed in. This battle was instrumental in booting the Ottoman Empire from what is now Israel. These soldiers tricked the Turks by charging them. Light horseman traditionally dismounted and then attacked on foot. Knowing their situation was bleak, 800 soldiers ran under the heavy guns effective line of fire and slaughtered the enemy.

When one absorbs the power of The Be’er Sheva memorial, it strongly reflects the values of the time. The sacrifices of the 1000s buried there reveal how seriously they were prepared to defend the very freedoms we seem so willingly prepared to give up today for the sake of political correctness.